I would love to have more space: I'm running out of space in this house, especially if I get more rewards from careers or partying, Marjo then starts praying that her goods will sell on the Haunted Bazaar.

But then, a few in-game hours later, she comes to the grim realization that the gifts she obtained from partying, the bonus items from her toons' career progression, along with the loan payment, made her bills skyrocket. Which ate nearly all the cash she had on hand. Property tax, loan payments, power, mobile, Web and water being the main bills, in that order, and we pay all at once. Hopefully we can hold out until the end of the shift...

"Check against your loan balance, please!" Gordon hollers as he sends his own ghosts to collect wood and stone.

"Don't forget about the Haunted Bazaar!" Artabeles hollers.

Marjo then chooses to have her main work from home, even though she's still hung over from the keg stand of the previous in-game night.

----------------

Meanwhile, Adèle sorted through the bug reports submitted by the players during the night and the early morning. A lot of them have to do with behaviors and personalities not working properly. Like embarrassment, anger, confusion and terror. When the time comes for Marjo's report to be discussed:

"That's a little specific, but there's a player who claims jealousy isn't working properly!" Adèle reports to the QA team.

"Oh?" a QA engineer gasps. "What do you mean?"

"That player attended a house party, filled it in full, flirted with another player's ghost until that player had them kiss each other, without causing the significant other to be jealous. Before you ask, no alcohol was distributed in this party!"

"Positioning?" another QA engineer asks.

"The character's significant other had the kiss happen in his field of vision! That player tried to flirt another character in the gym a little later, with the same relative positioning! Then jealousy happened!"

The QA team picks apart scenarios, such as the rapport the significant other have with the ghost Marjo's main have with the character Marjo had flirt, as well as other factors unrelated to the participants.

"Are all parties supposed to give attendees and hosts immunity from romantic jealousy while underway?" the trans QA engineer asks her, believing that immunity to jealousy might come from an error in a line of code specific to partying behavior.

"No; the speed kisser achievement was supposed to be a prerequisite to host a jealousy-immune party, the speed date!" Adèle retorts.

"It seems like the partying system is about to become a monster in its own right! I knew that some people might want to flaunt their outfits in social settings, such as a party, and you made every party in the game hostable at players' homes!" a gay engineer questions Adèle. "But what is the purpose of giving special properties to parties? Outside of weddings or birthday parties of course..."

"Usually, rewards from parties help host more parties for which the source is a prereq. Having parties serve specific purposes allow players to kill multiple birds with one stone!"

"Adèle, I'm afraid that people will only throw parties specifically to obtain a specific reward from it! Be it an outfit, a dance floor, a keg, to name those actually won by players at this point!" the trans QA engineer retorts.

"For as long as these kinds of games existed, people will farm content, and sometimes at the exclusion of all else within a class of content!" the gay engineer scolds Adèle. "Did you give any thought about balancing parties' rewards?"

"Exactly: I don't want rewards from partying to overshadow other ways to earn money or wish points!"

After this discussion about partying system balancing ends, the engineers get to work finding and, hopefully, fixing the bugs related to character behavior and personalities. And maybe, just this once, give some thought to rebalancing something other than emotions.

Marjorine... not even you can find all the bugs. But if immunity to jealousy is taken away from parties other than speed dating, speed kisser will still be relatively easy, just takes more positional effort to achieve, especially if one of the attendees is in a relationship with another one. However, it might make partying more dynamic for those who want to play ghosts in relationships, Adèle starts to think about the gameplay impact of immunity to jealousy.

----------------

Back in Kinder, however, Marjorine has her hung over character draw the outfit Gordon won. The character's hangover makes the design screen glare at random, but remain mostly usable otherwise.

"Ooh... ghost hangovers actually have an effect on how you see things in-game!" Marjo then prepares herself to receive the specs Gordon asks for. "It's going to make the drawing harder, but luckily it's not too complicated!"

"That's the kind of small thing I think I would love to have introduced in other activities in the game!" Artabeles comments on how the effects of the hangover not being fully cured affect her character's actions.

It was a little fast, but she makes it in the nick of time, so her main spends the whole shift drawing this pattern, while her other at-home ghosts doing their own things in the background. Not always as she would have liked, but better than them getting nothing done at all.

But then, she keeps ignoring a notification of the game, which makes her want to scream:

"Game, what's so important that you need to remind me at every turn?" Marjo screams at her screen.

"Just check the in-game notifications!" Artabeles yells back at her.

There are several such notifications. The most important of the gang is about the memory system, which separates the good and the bad memories of characters. The first meal they cooked, the first outfit they designed, the first plant they grew, that kind of thing. At the center of it all, the speed kisser achievement, and also blacking out.

But also the daily Haunted Bazaar statement. Total sales, and then the various expenses incurred by selling on the HB: shipping and listing fees, as well as the sales tax. Which, unlike the sales tax she's used to in the real world, here it's actually progressive and the HB's prices are always tax-inclusive.

"Is that it? While I am grateful for the Haunted Bazaar payout, I might be wondering why is it that the game kept reminding me about it when I was designing the outfit!" She keeps whining about that aspect of the game.

And, while she makes the final payment on her in-game loan, she feels relieved, in that her bills won't be nearly as expensive next time. Yet she is reminded of her lack of space at home putting a straitjacket on a lot of things. Such as the amount of crops she can produce, and the gear she can equip her home for throwing parties.

After their in-game dinner ends, she sends her characters out to level certain abilities, such as her cook on the chemistry workbench and her male trans writing a non-fiction book. And, of course, her female trans main sewing the outfit Gordon won earlier.

When her trans couple is about to get some intimacy in bed, as they are about to go to sleep, for some reason, a bright light is being flashed at her male trans character from outside their home. Who then tries to evade it, along with her main, and leaving their bedroom for that.

"What did he do in-game to deserve this?" Marjo screams as his trans couple runs around the house like headless chickens. "He was already caught for a previous crime and he was sentenced to serve as a test subject!"

As much as her male trans character might have tried to evade the searchlight, he is inexplicably drawn to it, and leaves the house. Turns out that the searchlight the couple previously sought to evade came from an UFO. As he approaches the searchlight, an alien-sounding tune is being played.

"And aliens then? What would aliens even want with my trans male? My main is the most accomplished of my ghosts!" Marjorine fumes as her in-game camera is now centered on her trans male closing in on the searchlight.

Meanwhile, her main yells at a cloud, watching, powerless, as her love interest gets sucked into the UFO by a tractor beam. Just as they were about to get some intimacy in.

"Here's our chance to see what would alien abductions give us in this game. In past games with alien abductions, it seems like the captors perform experiments on the abductees, usually exobiology ones!" Artabeles comments on what just happened on air. "I would love to see the alien abductees act as something more, or other than, medical researchers!"

Man, that's a lot of clips to upload to YouTube once the stream ends! One with the speed kisser run, and the other with the alien abduction of my male trans! Marjorine seems a little overwhelmed by just how much material she can wring out of only one morning of playing the game.

"What's exobiology?" a confused Marjo asks Artabeles when he drops a mention of UFO operators using UFOs to conduct exobiology experiments.

"Exobiology, in this context, is about studying living organisms foreign to the aliens' home world(s)!"

"At this point, there is no telling about what consequences the abduction would have on him, nor how long he will stay in the aliens' custody!" Gordon adds to Artabeles' comment about alien abduction.

Viewer: You boldly go where no one has gone before

With the alien abduction causing her to be short one ghost for however long the abduction is going to last, Marjo is left wondering under what conditions her male trans is going to be returned to her.

"Am I going to lose my male trans ghost this early in the game?" Marjo starts crying, thinking of what her male trans crafts. "There has to be... some mechanism in place for the abductee to return!"

Her other viewers are ecstatic to watch for the consequences an alien abduction would have on an in-game ghost. They are willing to wait a few more minutes, hoping that the abduction is temporary. As is usually the case in games of that type.

That said, she tries to get some intimacy in for her cis characters while her male trans is under alien custody. That ought to keep the couple happy, or at least distracted from the abduction! But now I understand why people could want to play the game.

Her transfem is getting sleep troubles once more; however, this time around, she doesn't feel like telling the manufacturer the bug isn't fixed. Because even she knew that a loved one being abducted by anyone, alien or not, would keep the abductees' loved ones up at night. Especially since they, as with her, are worried about what kinds of things the aliens do to the abductee.

Server announcement: The servers will shut down in five minutes for behavior and personality bug fixes – no estimated downtime

"Damn; I was hoping to see what would the aliens do to my character, and how they choose their targets!" Marjo's disappointment shows on her face, while she cuts the stream. "See you next time!" She then logs off the game.

After she logs off the game, she gets to work editing the clips from the keg party, the rewards from it, including those earned from the speed kisser achievement, as well as the first part of the alien abduction. She then leaves the voice chat of her server.

"Honey, it's your turn to cook lunch!" her dad yells at her.

"Not now, dad, I have some videos to post! The keg party and then the alien abduction! I also have a guide to write about keg parties!"

The prerequisite for hosting a keg party is, well, the keg. Which is earned from winning a gold in a house party. Party-wide tasks include drinking a certain number of cups out of the keg, serving a certain number of food plates, the host making a keg stand, and baking a dessert, along with a few random, interaction-based goals. On the other hand, the personal gauge appears to be dominated by interaction-based goals, Marjo then writes down the reward for getting gold as a host: the dance floor.

And she follows through with a guide for the speed kisser achievement, about what should players do before throwing or attending a party to obtain it. After which point the server is still down.

"Did you have an idea of what to cook yet?" Marjo's dad asks her.

"Ants climbing a tree, dad!"

He gasps upon hearing about ants climbing a tree. "Is that a recipe from your game?"

"No" She looks up a recipe for ants climbing a tree on mobile. "There are no ants in this recipe! Start cooking the ground meat; I will prepare the spaghetti and then onions and scallions!"